Fragments on Lamentations · §95 · Origen of Alexandria

Famine of glorious infants; dragons and Sirens

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About famine of the glorious infants he speaks, as Jerusalem not even having been able like the wild animals to hold out a breast to them. And the excess of the passion also works a forgetting of nature. And dragons—or also the Sirens according to Symmachus—you will hear as the evil spirits, those who nursed their own newborns with evil milk. And such are those introduced by the teachings of the impious (Lamentations 4:3).

Greek

Klagel. Jerem. 4, 3. Περὶ λιμοῦ τῶν ἐνδόξων λέγει βρεφῶν, ὡς τῆς Ἱερουσαλὴμ μηδὲ τοῖς ἀγρίοις ζώοις ὁμοίως θηλὴν αὐτοῖς προτεῖναι δεδυνημένης. ἡ δὲ τοῦ πάθους ὑπερβολὴ καὶ φύσεως λήθην ἐργάζεται. δράκοντας δὲ ἢ καὶ τὰς κατὰ Σύμμαχον Σειρῆνας ἀκούσει τὰ πονηρὰ πνεύ- ματα, τὰ τοὺς ἑαυτῶν νεογνοὺς πονηρῷ θηλάσαντα γάλακτι. τοι- οῦτοι δὲ οἱ ταῖς δοδασκαλίαις τῶν ἀσεβῶν εἰσαγόμενοι.

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About this text

Origen on Lamentations: Jeremiah's grief for captive Jerusalem, read also as the soul taken captive by sin and set free by Christ.

Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–c. 254) was a Christian teacher in Alexandria and head of the catechetical school. This English is his fragments on Lamentations.

The full commentary is lost. What survives are short passages kept in later chains of quotations. He sets out the literal sense, the Hebrew form of the book, and its historical setting, and he compares the Greek translations.

A reader meets Jeremiah lamenting the fall of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem read both as the city and as the soul. Origen quotes Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion. He also cites Paul, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Zechariah, and Daniel. He uses Septuagint book names and Psalm numbering.

EditionKlostermann, Origenes Werke III (GCS 6, 1901)

We have not yet re-checked this work against its source. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Greek on any section to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.

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